Study Questions

1

1. What are the
dreams of the main characters—Mama, Ruth, Beneatha, and Walter—and
how are they deferred?

Mama dreams of moving her family
out of the ghetto and into a house with a yard where children can
play and she can tend a garden. Her dream has been deferred since
she and her husband moved into the apartment that the Youngers still
inhabit. Every day, her dream provides her with an incentive to
make money. But no matter how much she and her husband strived,
they could not scrape together enough money to make their dream
a reality. His death and the resulting insurance money present Mama’s
first opportunity to realize her dream.

Ruth’s dream is similar to Mama’s. She wants to build
a happy family and believes one step toward this goal is to own
a bigger and better place to live. Ruth’s dream is also deferred
by a lack of money, which forces her and Walter to live in a crowded
apartment where their son, Travis, must sleep on a sofa.

Beneatha’s dream is to become a doctor and
to save her race from ignorance. The first part of her dream may
be deferred because of the money Walter loses. Her dream is also
one deferred for all women. Beneatha lives in a time when society expects
women to build homes rather than careers. As for saving her race
from ignorance, Beneatha believes she can make people understand
through action, but the exact course she chooses remains unclear
at the end of the play.

Walter dreams of becoming wealthy and providing
for his family as the rich people he drives around do. He often
frames this dream in terms of his family—he wants to give them what
he has never had. He feels like a slave to his family’s economic
hardship. His dream has been deferred by his poverty and inability
to find decent employment. He attributes his lack of job prospects to
racism, a claim that may be partially true but that is also a crutch.
Over the course of the play, his understanding of his dream of gaining
material wealth evolves, and by play’s end, it is no longer his
top priority.

2

2. What does
Mama’s plant represent, and how does the symbol evolve over the
course of the play?

Mama’s plant, which is weak but resilient,
represents her dream of living in a bigger house with a lawn. As
she tends to her plant, she symbolically shows her dedication to
her dream. Mama first pulls out her plant early in the morning.
In fact, it is the first thing that she does in the morning; thus,
at the beginning of the play we see that her plant—and her dream—are
of the highest importance to her. Mama admits that the plant has
never had enough sunshine but still survives. In other words, her
dream has always been deferred but still remains strong. At the
end of the play, Mama decides to bring the plant with her to their
new home. In doing so, she gives a new significance to the plant.
While it initially stands for her deferred dream, now, as her dream
comes true, it reminds her of her strength in working and waiting
for so many years.

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3. How does
the description of the Youngers’ apartment contribute to the mood
of the play?

Because all of the action of the play takes
place between its walls, the Youngers’ apartment determines the
play’s entire atmosphere and feel. The residence is very small,
with one window, and the Youngers—especially Walter—feel trapped
within their lives, their ghetto, and their poverty. Hansberry creates
a stage that helps to illustrate this feeling of entrapment. The
lack of natural light in the apartment contributes to the sense
of confinement, and the tiny amount of light that does manage to
trickle into the apartment is a reminder both of the Youngers’ dreams
and of the deferment of those dreams. Similarly, the furniture,
originally chosen with pride but now old and worn, symbolizes the
family itself. The Youngers are overworked and tired, and their
dreams are trampled under the conditions of day-to-day existence,
though they retain a core of pride that can never be entirely hidden.